


The Taste of Peanut Butter

by thisiszircon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:45:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3940771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ace and Hex and the Doctor.  Sex and love, fear and friendship, all in the still of the TARDIS night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Peanut Butter

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go, as always, to my treasure of a beta, Nemo_the_Everbeing.
> 
> This story is set in the Big Finish universe while Hex is travelling with the Seventh Doctor and Ace.

**"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."**

**Charlie Brown**

**(Charles M. Schulz: Peanuts)**

 

God.

When she moved like this, her body above and around him, surrounding him, controlling him, using him, those muscles pulling and relaxing, skin so warm and smelling so sweet...

When Ace moved like this, Hex had no idea how he managed to keep it together.

In any other circumstances this kind of sex would be humiliating.  Mind-blowing too, while it lasted - for him, at least - but then humiliating, at that inevitable point when he needed to make his apologies.  Hex was well aware of his limitations.

But here they were again, and she was moving like this, and so far he was keeping it together.

Had this life of adventure somehow augmented his body?  A slow, cell-by-cell alteration, courtesy of the incomprehensible technology of the TARDIS, perhaps?  Something that was changing out the cack-handed horny-bloke-in-his-twenties material for something better suited to a space-and-time-travelling hero.  Maybe that was it.  Maybe it was the ship that had turned him into a man who possessed a degree of skill in bed: one who could keep going long enough for the woman with him to find her pleasure without worrying about a premature conclusion to proceedings.

It was a nice idea.  In a fucked up way, it was nice.  But in truth, Hex knew what was really happening here.  It was need.  Desperation.  Alas, it was love.  It was the onerous knowledge that he'd waited his whole life to be with this woman.  He was damned if he was going to fail her in any way, because that would be failing himself.  It would cost him his Next Time: the Next Time he had come to crave.

It was also about the fact that he knew her eyes were closed.

Ace's rhythm quickened.  She was never a vocal lover - she made love like she was still seventeen and trying not to alert her mother across the landing - but Hex always knew when she was close.  The soft rush of her breathing, by now shallow and rapid, would begin to catch at the back of her throat.  It was just the tiniest of sounds, not even a full-fledged gasp, but it was there.  She was close.

This was the signal.  Something pressed through the need and desperation and love, and gave Hex permission to process his own pleasure.  With a suddenness that was breathtaking, he felt each and every nerve-ending flare with erotic heat.  The intensity made him moan into the half-light of his bedroom (always his bedroom, she always came to him, and he knew it was because she needed to be the one who could leave afterwards) and the sound was startling enough to make him open his eyes.

Yes, he kept his eyes shut too.  He'd learned to, early on.  If he kept his eyes shut, even though he ached to look at her, then he'd never have to see the truth.

But the pleasure was intense and Ace was making those incredible sounds, and her thighs were soft and hard all at once, feminine-smooth and yet toned and capable under his hands as they lifted and fell, lifted and fell.  Hex opened his eyes, aware he'd broken their near-silence with his moan, aware that he shouldn't look.  But he simply couldn't help it.

And he saw what he'd come to expect.

Damn it, he should have turned the lights down all the way.  They should be making love in darkness.  It would be easier on both of them.

Hex wasn't a lip-reader, but it didn't take much to recognise the shape a mouth makes when forming a plosive like 'P' - lips together then air blowing them apart - or a fricative consonant like 'F' - upper teeth against lower lip.  Those bloody letters were unmistakable.

He closed his eyes again, shutting her out.  He wasn't moaning any more.  His body had begun to retreat from the need for orgasm.

Hex spent the next short while - time was difficult to monitor in a quantifiable way when the woman you loved was riding your body to pleasure while mouthing another man's name - trying to come up with P-and-F words.  Proof.  Profound.  Perform...yeah, that one would do it.  Ace was muttering about how excellent her lover's performance was tonight, that was it.  Obviously.

Oh, fuck everything.

It occurred to Hex that if he had to be so unremittingly stupid as to indulge in unrequited love, he should make the effort to be more of a bastard about it.  A bit of guilt-tripping, or some creepy stalking, or a nice healthy dose of anger: any of those would probably make him feel better.  But no, he had to do the noble thing, didn't he?  Acknowledge that there was no blame on either side.  He'd wrapped himself up in platitudes about how unrequited love was actually a perfect love, because something that never begins can never end; something that never becomes real can never be tainted by reality.  He told himself his love would endure, unreciprocated but unchanging.  Constant.  Like a diamond.  This idea had a brilliance, a beauty about it.

Of course, then there was the fact that unrequited love hurt like fucking knives in his heart.

Oblivious to his turmoil, Ace's 'nearly there' sounds morphed into a series of tiny, hiccupped breaths, inhale, inhale, inhale, the staccato gasps telling him as much about what her body was doing as the press of her fingernails into his chest and the tremors where his cock was buried.  Her release distracted him.  Never mind the way he'd just witnessed her distance, her infidelity.  He was a human male, and he still wanted the woman whose body trembled above him.

And Hex might well err on the side of nobility, but he wasn't immune to anger.  He heard himself give a small growl, and he arched his body so suddenly that Ace's perch over his hips wobbled.  Even as she rode out the aftermath of her orgasm, she reached to clutch his shoulders for balance and opened her eyes.  This made Hex realise that he'd already opened his.

They were looking at each other.  That was a bit of a first.

To his horror, Ace looked a little on the blurry side.

The moment held.  Hex sniffed, and dared Ace to acknowledge the shining in his eyes.  Then he rolled the both of them on his bed, so fast that he didn't have time to think about the logistics of keeping their bodies connected.  It just happened.  He was on top, now.  Another first, since they'd started this thing.  (The closest he'd come before was when they'd made love on their sides, spooned up, the intimacy of their snug bodies undermined by the way he couldn't see her face.  Undermined by it; maybe helped by it.)

Hex wasn't so far gone that he believed he'd just taken control.  If Ace had not wanted to allow this, he'd have been flipped out of bed and would currently be trying to recover his wits on the other side of the bedroom.  He supported his weight with arms propped either side of Ace's ribs.  (He was angry, sure, but he wasn't an arsehole.)  She lifted herself and accommodated his need to thrust.  (She was in love with someone else, sure, but she wasn't selfish.)  She watched him, and the look in her eyes was understanding, almost compassionate.  He couldn't cope with that.  Why couldn't she be startled, or even just blank and uncaring?  That would have been easier.

Hex closed his eyes on her expression, deliberately shutting her out, feeling no sense of minor victory, no tit-for-tat.  He focused on the sensations of the sex.  He'd already been so close, so turned on.  Ace's body was still warm and pulsating.  God help him, he still loved her with a passion beyond words.

It took him no more than a dozen thrusts of his hips before pleasure ignited in his loins.  He climaxed hard with a cry that mixed relief with despair.  His arms sagged, bent at the elbows, to keep him half-lifted over Ace's body.

He wondered if he was going to cry.

She gave him enough time for his breathing to begin to even out.  Then, with a tiny press against his chest, she indicated that he should move off her.  Hex gathered the broken pieces of himself and tumbled to his back on the mattress beside her.  His eyes were still shut.  He waited for the sound and the motion of her standing up.  Picking up her clothes.  Leaving without a word.

Hex couldn't remember the last time he had relaxed in someone's arms.  Just holding, touching, talking.  He wondered if it made him less of a man that he wanted it so badly.

Ace didn't leave.

He finally risked an eye.  She was staring at the ceiling.  "Sorry," he whispered.  Breaking the rules.  Making conversation.

"Yeah," she whispered back.  "Me too."

They were quiet for a while.  Both staring at the ceiling.

"Probably shouldn't do this again," Ace finally said.

The sense of loneliness, of rejection, threatened to tear Hex apart.  He swallowed the pain and said, "It's okay.  I know the score.  Always did."

"I know.  Still isn't fair."

"On any of us," he agreed.

Another pause.  Ace had grown tense.

Hex decided that if you love someone, if you really love someone, with that genuine, complete, selfless love that means you place their needs above your own...if you love someone like that, you should probably do as the man said and set them free.

"It's okay," he said.

"You already said that."

"No, I mean - I get it.  I understand.  Why you're here.  With me.  Like this."

"Don't-"

"It's because you can't be w-"

"No!"  Ace sat up in bed.  She sighed.  "I am not having this conversation with you."

The anger came back, because what else was he supposed to feel?  He'd just offered Ace the most painfully generous gift he could imagine, and she'd shoved it right back at him.

"That's it, then, is it?" he asked, voice hardening, cutting through the post-orgasmic lull.  "I'm fine for a quick shag, but if it comes to a proper talk about stuff that matters, I'm not to be trusted?"

"It's not about trust," she said, hard, like him.  Brittle, like him.

The anger melted away as he saw her own desperation.  "No," he realised.  "It's fear, isn't it?"

The accusation made her look at him.  Unsurprising, really.  Ace McShane wasn't someone you'd lightly accuse of being afraid.  She was the bravest, most capable, most remarkable woman Hex had ever met.

She blinked.  Maybe she had to, to keep the tears away.  "I should go," she said, and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

"You shouldn't be afraid," he said, wondering why his aching heart and his seething sense of jealousy were failing to tamp down this urge to be a friend.  "You should tell him."

"I _said_ -"

"Yeah, I know what you said.  No conversation.  No way, no how.  Except you've still got to get your kecks on, haven't you?  So I figure I've got some time, even if you won't talk back."

"Stop being annoying."

"Stop being evasive.  You should tell him."

"Too much to lose," she muttered, pulling on her underwear.

The fact that she'd actually engaged with the discussion went some way to indicating how lost she was feeling.  "Sweet FA to lose," he insisted.  "I'll give you a demo."

Ace looked up.  "Already?  Give you this, scouse-boy.  Your recovery rate's impressive."

"Not what I mean."  He looked stern.

When Ace realised he wasn't to be distracted by innuendo or veiled compliments, she frowned and went to pick up her jeans.  "Look, I told you.  I'm not having this con-"

"I love you," he said.

They both paused.  They might even have briefly held their breath, both of them, letting the words settle into the half-light.  He hadn't said them before.  He'd been expecting them to taste like ash in his mouth.  They didn't.  They tasted like truth.

Ace said, "Hex-"

"And I know you don't love me back."

"I do," she said, surprising the hell out of him.  "Just...not in the way you want."

"Well, there you go, then," he said.  Oh, god, sad and happy, sad and happy and suddenly, weirdly _tired_ , all at once.  "I screwed up my courage and I told you.  And I didn't lose anything, because I didn't have anything to lose."  He blinked as he processed their last exchange.  "Actually I'm up on the deal.  Got a little pressie."

She shook her head as she pulled on her jeans.  "It's not the same."

"Course it is.  Just 'cause he's an alien.  Thousand years old, whatever.  Unrequited love is unrequited love.  Only difference for you is that you don't know for sure.  Not like I did."

"That's the point!"  She stood straight, bare-chested, breasts pert and beautiful as she squared her shoulders and placed her hands on her hips.  "If I tell...if I do what you suggest..."  She lowered her head and shed the defiance.  "I lose the hope."

"But you do have hope?" he asked, kind of surprised.  A woman as courageous as Ace would have done something about this mess of feelings if she'd seen any glimmer of a possibility.  Surely.  So he'd assumed she felt things were hope _less_.  Just as he'd thought she was wrong to feel that way, because after all, he'd spent the last two years watching the Doctor and Ace interact.  And Hex was a lot of things, but he wasn't blind.

"Fuck.  Fucking _fuck_ it.  I hate this," Ace growled.  She found her bra and began to put it on.  It looked like she was fighting it as much as trying to wear it.  "I don't want to live like this."

"You don't want to live without him, either," Hex pointed out.

"I won't," she corrected.  "Won't do that.  Ever.  But I don't want this stupid fucking hope.  Or the fear.  Hurts."

"Knowing hurts too," he pointed out, only peripherally aware of how his knuckles pressed against the place over his heart.

She hesitated, long enough to look at him and catch her bottom lip between her teeth.  "And I'm sorry about that," she said softly.

"Don't be.  Not your fault."

"Still."

"Yeah."

She pulled on her T-shirt and picked up her socks.  She sat down on the edge of the bed to put them on.  It struck Hex as odd that she always came to him fully dressed, even in the middle of the TARDIS night.  The reason why she did things this way came to him in a flash.

"You don't want him to know about this, do you?" he said.

Ace sighed.  "When did we start having this conversation I said we weren't going to have?"

"When you realised you need to talk about it?"  Hex tried a smile when she looked over her shoulder at him.  He still lay naked on the rumpled sheets, unashamed of his body - which he'd always taken some pride in - and uninhibited by the intimacy they'd just shared.  "Come on, Ace.  I'm more than just a pretty face."  He glanced down at himself.  "Or, you know, other bits."

This earned him a grudging laugh.  Ace twisted on the bed to sit cross-legged, facing him.

"Well?" he coaxed.

"Well what?"

"You don't want him to know."

"I sometimes think it isn't possible he _doesn't_ know," she said.  She looked around the room, at the roundels of the walls.  "This ship has telepathic circuits.  And he's pretty much hard-wired into them."

"But you still don't let him catch you sneaking into my room in your jim-jams."

"No."

"And I gotta tell you, you aren't the noisiest lover I've ever known."

"I leave the heavy-breathing to you," she threw back.

"Ace."

She shook her head.  "I don't know, Hex.  I just don't know."

"You're all mixed up," he deduced.  "You don't want him to know, because you don't want him to think you're spoken for.  Or that you're trying to make him jealous?"

"I don't want him to know because if he does, and he doesn't care, it might just kill me," she said quietly.

Hex nodded.  Now she'd said it, it made sense.  "And at the same time, you _want_ him to know because it might get you a reaction.  Make him jealous.  Make him come clean about how he feels about you."

"Don't make this romantic," she said, almost sneering.  "God, this whole stupid thing - I never saw anything less romantic than this."

Hex lifted an arm and tucked it behind his head.  "Fine.  As you like.  Still think you should tell him."

"Why?"  She peered at him through the dimness.  "I don't get it.  What's in it for you?"

"Not'n," he said, revelling in his scouse-ness.  "Apart from the fact that I love you.  And I want you to be happy.  Sickening, isn't it?"

"Kind of."

"Except it's the same way you'd feel, if you told the Doctor and he said no-can-do."  He arched a brow.  "We both know he loves you.  Maybe he can't love you the way you want.  But like you said, you won't live without him, and if he found someone that made him happy then-"

"Then I'd kill them."  Ace's voice was serial-killer-cold.

Hex wasn't fooled.  "No you wouldn't.  You'd spend some time thinking about how much it hurts to have your heart torn into little tiny pieces, then you'd remember that you can't force someone to love you, and that you care more about him being happy than you do about you being unhappy."

"I'm not like you, Hex."

"More than you think."

Ace chewed her lip for a while, then she looked up at him.  "So what about this?  What about us?"

Hex narrowed his eyes.  "I don't want this to be the last time," he said.  "Not just 'cause I'm a red-blooded male who likes getting his end away."

"Okay then," she said.  She even looked kind of relieved.

"But...I think it would be better if you didn't try to pretend I'm someone else."

For a moment she looked like she was going to deny the comment, then she nodded.  "Fair enough."

"I'll take what I can get, Ace," he said.  "I'm sort of pathetic like that.  I'll make do.  I'll be friends-with-benefits, even with the woman of my dreams."

"Don't talk shite."

"Don't diss my sincerest feelings."  Hex sighed.  "But even though I can't believe I'm still carping on about it - tell him.  Find out whether it's yes or no.  If it's yes, fine.  I'll say congratulations and I'll do my best to not want to kill him.  Probably do something manly and stupid like tell him if he ever hurts you I'll break his neck.  And if it's no-"

Ace's breath caught.  She hung her head.

"Hey.  Jude.  As the song goes.  If it's no, you'll work out how to live with that, because that's all you can do.  And I'll be here with a shoulder to cry on, if you need it."

Ace stood up.  She sniffed: a brisk sound, a sound that pretended it had nothing to do with all that swirling emotion.  "I don't deserve you."

"Now who's talking shite?"

"I mean it.  I can't even...I wish I could.  Do better by you.  You know?  But I can't."

"I know."

"And I'd still be jealous and stupid about it if _you_ met someone else."

Hex smirked.  "Greedy cow."

"Yeah."  She let her eye drift over his naked form, and she half-smiled.  "Nice body, pretty face.  Friendly shoulder and pearls of wisdom to boot."  Ace sighed.  "And I can't see past the short alien with the terrible knitwear who's about to get started on his second millennium."  She rolled her eyes.  "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"No accounting for taste."

"Or love."

"Or that."

Ace smiled tightly.  "Night Hex."

"Night Ace.  Sweet dreams."

The room grew momentarily brighter as the door to his quarters was opened and the light from the passageway outside spilled in.  Then the door closed and he was alone.

Hex placed his hand on the closest bit of wall.  "Telepathic circuits, eh?" he mused to himself.  "Well, ship, if you've got any sense then you'll give your man there a talking to."  A thought occurred.  "And you'll do it even if you feel the same about him as I do about her."  His arm dropped.  "Set me free, why don't you babe?" he sang quietly.  "You just keep me hanging...fuck it."

He struggled out of bed and went to shower, because nobility could only carry you so far.  After a while, the scent of the woman of your dreams on your skin was still likely to drive you insane.


End file.
